But Beautiful: A Book about Jazz - Softcover

Dyer, Geoff

4.25

2,919 ratings by Goodreads

9780865475083: But Beautiful: A Book about Jazz

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0865475083 ISBN 13: 9780865475083

Publisher: North Point Press, 1997

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In eight poetically charged vignettes, Geoff Dyer skillfully evokes the music and the men who shaped modern jazz. Drawing on photos, anecdotes, and, most important, the way he hears the music, Dyer imaginatively reconstructs scenes from the embattled lives of some of the greats: Lester Young fading away in a hotel room; Charles Mingus storming down the streets of New York on a too-small bicycle; Thelonius Monk creating his own private language on the piano. However, music is the driving force of But Beautiful, and Dyer brings it to life in luminescent and wildly metaphoric prose that mirrors the quirks, eccentricity, and brilliance of each musician’s style.

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Review:

Besides colorful and expressive music, jazz greats such as Lester Young, Thelonius Monk and Duke Ellington led equally colorful, albeit self-destructive, lives. Through this collection of essays, Geoff Dyer recounts some of the more vivid episodes and events these personalities engaged in and illuminates unique aspects of their character that contributed to their music. He also sheds light on the oppression of working within an atmosphere of race-alienation, a hardship that led many to abuse alcohol and drugs, and find solace only in their incredible music.

About the Author:

Geoff Dyer is the author of Ways of Telling, critical study of John Berger; The Missing of the Somme, about World War I; and the novels Paris Trance, Out of Sheer Rage, The Color of Memory and The Search.

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